Powerful Quake Hits Northern Afghanistan, Shaking The Region

An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 hit northeast Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan and was felt across the region as far north as Tajikistan and as far south as India.

At least 180 people have died, with the majority of casualties reportedly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hundreds of others were wounded. However, the situation on the ground remains unclear and the death toll is expected to rise.

The Associated Press says that "Pakistani officials said that at least 147 people were killed and nearly 600 others wounded across the country, while Afghan officials said 33 people were killed and more than 200 wounded."

NPR's Philip Reeves, reporting from Kabul, filed this report on damage from the earthquake, said to be mostly in northern Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan.

"In one Afghan town, 12 school girls died trying to escape a building via a stairway. In Pakistan, TV footage shows cracked buildings, houses with missing roofs, cars crashed by trees, and injured people crowding into hospitals.

"This quake struck in a remote area and, in many places, cut power and communications, so the full picture's far from clear. Concern's particularly focusing on villages in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, where after recent rain and snow, there's a risk of landslides."

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest speaking Monday during the daily briefing told reporters, the United States is prepared to help if asked.

"The U.S. government has been in touch with the governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan and we stand ready to provide any additional support that may be needed," Earnest said.

"Modi reached out to Pakistan despite the frosty relations between the two countries and the renewed cross-border firing by Pakistan in which one civilian has been killed in Jammu and Kashmir and several others injured, besides leading to a scare in the border villages.

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"Pakistan's information minister Pervez Rashid, meanwhile, told a news conference Pakistan will not issue any appeals to the international community for help as the country has the required resources to carry out the rescue and relief work. He also thanked neighboring India for offering support to Islamabad for the quake victims.

"He said Pakistani civil and military authorities were trying their best to reach those affected by the quake."

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the temblor was "approximately 210 km [132 miles] below the Hindu Kush Range in northeastern Afghanistan." The epicenter was some 150 miles from the Afghan capital city of Kabul.

"In the city of Karimabad [Pakistan], in Gilgit-Baltistan, a witness who gave his name as Anas told the BBC that the quake had sent a landslide crashing into the Hunza river.

" 'At first it was as if someone was shaking us. There were about 20 of us and we just held on to each other,' he said.

" 'Right after that we saw a major landslide. Some people say it was a glacier that came down, some people say it was a hill. It fell right in front of our eyes.' "

The Guardian reports elsewhere in Pakistani, the isolated village of Chitral, near the Afghan border, was hard hit and at least a dozen people were killed.

"Among the dead were passengers travelling to a wedding when their four-wheel-drive vehicle was hit by falling boulders from the steep mountainsides.

" 'In Chitral it was just so shocking – we are so close to the epicentre,' said Asadullah Ghalib, a Chitral resident. "There have been landslides, extensive damage to infrastructure and a lot of old houses have been completely damaged."

Geophysicist Amy Vaughan of the USGS tells NPR's Newscast desk that the region is "very seismically active," noting that this is where the Eurasian and Indian plates converge.

Philip says that Monday's quake hit nearly a decade after a temblor that killed tens of thousands of people in the region:

"South Asians haven't forgotten the earthquake 10 years ago in the Himalayan Mountains in which more than 70,000 people — many of them Pakistanis — were killed, and many more were made homeless. That quake had a magnitude of 7.6."

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